41 
with a wound, ulcer, or other severe local complaint, is not so 
susceptible as others similarly exposed to the contagion of a fever 
or other general disorder. 
How far the access of those dreadful disorders which some¬ 
times arise of themselves in cattle and horses, and afterwards be¬ 
come contagions, as the murrain, glanders, farcy, &c. may be 
prevented by these peculiar irritations, it will not be easy to dis¬ 
cover ; nor whether that singular tendency or disposition in the 
Horse to inflammatory complaints, as the caligo of the eyes, 
termed moon-blindness, inflammations of the lungs and of the 
bones, as spavins, splints, &c. may be in any degree checked or 
subdued by the presence of these local stimuli. 
In confirmation of this suggestion I may remark (although I 
am aware other reasons may be also assigned for it,) that those 
Horses which are not exposed to the Bots, more frequently are 
infected with the glanders, farcy, &c. as those of the army, post- 
coaches, post-waggons, and dray-horses, for these can rarely be 
spared, from the nature of their work, to graze on the commons, 
and thus be exposed tn receive them. 
If, after a more minute research into their effects on the system, 
the utility of these native stimuli of animals should be established, 
and, like the leech, or the cantharides, they should be called in 
to the aid of veterinary medicine, I may venture perhaps for the 
first time to suggest that it would not be impracticable to admi¬ 
nister them artificially by means of their ova or larva; in any 
given quantity. 
It the stimulus is considered as of too gentle a nature, it is in 
some measure atoned for by its permanency, and the unlimited 
power of increasing the dose ; at least it must be acknowledged 
that by the administration of them in this way, we niight accu¬ 
rately ascertain their real effects, and whether they are so fatal as 
has been imagined. ’ 
Desirous that my horse, which had not been to grass for some 
L 
